[Tex/LaTex] Increase vertical spacing in bibliography using biblatex with bibtex backend

biblatexspacing

I'm rather new to the whole TeX experience and try to make a template to use for my masters thesis. Everything has been smooth except getting the references/bibliography right. I've spent numerous hours here, on CTAN and other sites to set up a Harvard style system.

I finally got it working using biblatex with bibtex as backend but one problem remains. There is no spacing between each entry. Normally there would be an indent but since I use the parskip package they are removed and for some reason the space that replace the indent in the body text does not appear in the bibliography.

I've made a minimum working example showing my problem plus one more thing that is acting weird, the whole .bib file is printed even if all works are not cited.

I would very much appreciate getting some help with this. Have spent hours trying different solutions proposed to similar problems without much luck.

I'm currently compiling with XeLatex and I'll try to provide additional details if needed. The whole thing is a little bit confusing still.

Here follows my working example:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,titlepage]{article}
\usepackage[parfill]{parskip}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{avant} %fontpack
\renewcommand*\familydefault{\sfdefault}
\usepackage[style=authoryear]{biblatex}
\bibliography{test}

\title{Biblatex test}
\author{Byggarebob}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

Blablabla
\cite{1}

Blablabla
\cite{2}

Blablabla
%\cite{3}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

My .bib file called test.bib:

@book{1,
author = {Penguin},
title = {Cold},
date = {2012-10-05},
}

@online{2,
author = {Cat},
ALTeditor = {editor},
title = {Google},
date = {2012-12-10},
url = {www.google.com},
}

@article{3,
author = {Dog},
title = {Running},
journaltitle = {Happy hound},
date = {2012-11-15},
}

Best Answer

In order to get a blank line between bibliography entries, you simply need to set the \bibitemsep length:

\setlength{\bibitemsep}{\baselineskip}

You don't need to redefine the bibliography environment to do this.

You also need to tell biblatex that you are using the bibtex backend:

\usepackage[style=authoryear, backend=bibtex]{biblatex}

and you should use

\addbibresource{<bibname.bib>}

instead of \bibliography{<bibname>} (which is now deprecated).

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